Tending
the night of the
election I’m in a cave
pouring potions no,
I’m pouring Gin and
Tonics and instead of
drinking I’m not even
drinking water and I
think
dehydration is a
form of self-care
in a
weird fucked up way
where I don’t know
how to handle being
alive until I have to
reset myself. drink
water first and
scream
later or scream first
until the voice is too
hoarse and go to the
farm and steal squash
and bramble coat and
mouth apology.
I didn’t
want to write a poem
about a government I
can’t see myself
surviving but I also
never wanted someone
to put their body on me
as a way of saving
themselves,
as a way of
farm-mouth body-
plant seed-survival.
sometimes the hole
crawls out of you and
forms a deeper hole
and names itself grave.
sometimes
there’s a reason to hear grave and wear
grieve instead.
legs can make a good
crop, can till land if you drag them hard
enough, can find trouble in the dirt,
find mine, if you bury sometimes it will
rise again. sometimes there is an
obvious reason to hide into the mouth
of a bull instead of into the body of a
parasite but mostly I just think escape
comes in what we know to repress.
I
forgive the land for its blood-harvest,
I
forgive the night and what it covers
me in,
I
forgive the days and their long
memory,
there’s a bumper crop of sadness in the
soil, there’s a cave full of alcohol and
nothing to breathe, we left after we
cried and then we cried and then one
of us was going to buy a gun and the
other was silent and I left. dirt is not a
metaphor for skin
oh what an untended garden,
the soil-mouth
is too swamp for vegetal growth, just
because we’re drunk doesn’t mean we
will survive a spell, just because we
know how to kill doesn’t mean we can,
doesn’t mean we wear grief on our
body like we’re going to battle.
tending
bar is not the same as tending a farm
even if the clientele is the same. it’s too
humid for certain plants to thrive and
yet I still despise transplants.
after
the results of the election we went to
the farm, the three of us, and you
kissed the inside of my mouth looking
for water. dehydration can be a form of
self-care if you focus on it, if you need
to reset yourself, if you need to
remember how to survive. there’s a
difference between force and escape,
but both are ways out. there’s an
obvious trauma and a lesser trauma.
there is farm skin on me, seeds in my
cheeks,
you light a one-hitter while
breaking glass,
you light harder than
the thought of death, none of us want
to die, none of us go home alone in
some fashion but some of us still have
to work the next day.
after
the election a friend planted himself in
my mouth and the soil didn’t take, and
we don’t know how to make something
grow out of this but there has to be a
way to live longer than what might kill
us, because what might kill
us hasn’t yet, none of the things that
can kill us have made a farm of our
body, no one drinks over our wakes,
sometimes a hole is just a place to put
your fears but also can just be a
hole.
After Heineken, or When Men at Bars Don’t Kill Me
When cisgender people hear I’ve been fired for being trans / they tell me how they do not go there / anymore / how they too have felt the hands of a privileged god descend upon them and oh / the things we do for money / as if this paper defines our identity
On my resume, under the name
lay my pronouns like soft graves.
I serve beer to men who talk about
the ways I defecate, and though
they speak not about the things that
exit me specifically they have thought
of what they would force me to carry
and I do not use the restroom at work
because I cannot afford to take out
a knife that has been so kind to make
house out of my stomach. How lucky
of me to lower the inhibitions holding
triggers to our throats.
On my resume, under my pronouns,
I list the places I have hidden knives
on my person. Once I carved my tongue
into a sharp point and held it in the cavity
of my mouth. If blood tastes of metal
am I more a blade than a bullet?
What is the metaphor? Don’t bring
a knife to a gun-fight? And I enter rooms
a trick / of light. If you look directly at me
I will not be in your focus, how there is
too much coagulation to see the other
side of an exit-wound.
An advertisement asks for the money I make serving men who wish to kill me, depicts a man who wishes to kill me refusing humanity unto someone who could be me / and this is not what irony is / this is what is not a dream / this is the hours of my life sold in order to maintain one / this is how we trod onward / wading in the shit spouting from the mouths of cisgender gods / all of them thinking about / how I defecate
Retelling of The Boy Who Cried Wolf or Stock Trans Motif Reprise
Rest in Power Alphonza Watson
And in the story the trans woman is murdered at 4:15 A.M.
and you do not know who she was, just that, she was. No, the
story does not begin there it begins with the written word, or
the bible. A body careening through a canyon (read as:
alleyway) singing Hell, and all of the angels leave heaven to find
her there at the bottom, drowned in herself. The angels speak
unto her do not sing hell, there is no fire yet, just matches for
bones, skin like flint, how combustible we birth you. And so in
the story the Bible opens on the scene of a trans woman
running through the field she works and the neighbors hear
the song but know not what to do but sleep and how we do so
forget our lyrics. The story continues a river running through
the sewers, a man places a foot into her to check for depth and
lifts a woman’s voice out of the wetness. It is winter and the
water chills the skin into a burn against the wind, she sings out
Hell—but is cut off, a drum line enters before she lives, and
yes in Aesop’s words no one dies in a literal fashion, but if
every sheep is also a transgender person we will not rub the
blood of a freshly slain ewe unto the masts of our doors. There
are not enough kids allowed to live long enough for an ewe to
be made again, and in the story a flock of sheep is found in
Louisiana and each home is stained with fresh meet, in the
story we have forgotten to name the herds before they are
found, in the story a neighbor will hold their friend, say a ram,
say how you must be feeling if even I am saddened over this.
Enter, Act I, Earth. Lucifer leaves Heaven and its convenience,
folds herself around an identity replicating what isn’t piety,
the world: ending, the world: ending, the world—ends, and there
are not enough graves for each bone left behind, no.
Enter the alleyway, the facts, a trans woman is found after two
wolves enter a vehicle and drive off, her belly is bit open by a
bullet. Three people have spoken that they heard her scream
Hell, but it’s easy to ignore the bleating if you forget so easily
the names. If in the fable the boy in the meadow sung out help
instead of wolf would the townspeople of come? would the
woman have had a better shot had she yelled hell and not help?
If you rub together the bones quick enough you can create
fire, and is that not why we are flaming, is wool nothing but
kindling? Still there are no ends to what we learn. A boy lies
and says they are a boy, the media finds the body of a woman
and name it a sheep, a community is slaughtered and they call
it protein, a diet, must be cooked but made to be ablaze so why
not be lit. What is hell if not an oven? What is sin but that
which spices a meal into something worthy of remembering?
At the end of the story, a
canyon folds itself into a
community, and what is that if
not a grave, and what do you
do with a grave but show up to
the burial, with shovels to help
cover the bodies.
Aeon Ginsberg (they/them) is a trans author from Baltimore City, Maryland. Their work has been featured or is forthcoming with Metatron, Lambda Literary, Shabby Doll House, and elsewhere, as well as in the chapbooks Until the Cows Come Home (Elation Press, 2016) and Loathe/Love/Lathe (Nostrovia! Press, 2017). They are a barista, a bartender, and a Taurus.
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Heavy Feather Review 